History shines at family reunion

Bigelow clan, descendants of famed Union alum and subject of exhibit, gather at college

By Paul Grondahl

Published 9:23 pm, Friday, July 19, 2013

Photo: Michael P. Farrell

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Descendants of John Bigelow Rod, left, and Don Bigelow at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y. John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a founder of the New York Public Library. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union) less

Descendants of John Bigelow Rod, left, and Don Bigelow at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y. John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a ... more

Photo: Michael P. Farrell

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A display in honor of John Bigelow at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y. John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a founder of the New York Public Library. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union) less

A display in honor of John Bigelow at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y. John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a founder of the New ... more

Photo: Michael P. Farrell

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Librarian Annette LeClair looks through some of the books from John Bigelow's library on display at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y. John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a founder of the New York Public Library. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union) less

Librarian Annette LeClair looks through some of the books from John Bigelow's library on display at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y. John Bigelow, Union College Class of ... more

Photo: Michael P. Farrell

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A death mask is part of a display in honor of John Bigelow at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y. John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and a founder of the New York Public Library. (Michael P. Farrell/Times Union) less

A death mask is part of a display in honor of John Bigelow at the Union College library on Friday July 19, 2013 in Schenectady, N.Y. John Bigelow, Union College Class of 1835, was a statesman and publisher and ... more

Photo: Michael P. Farrell

History shines at family reunion

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Schenectady

It's been 178 years since there were so many Bigelows on campus.

Descendants of John Bigelow, an 1835 graduate of Union College and a central figure in 19th-century American letters, gathered for a family reunion Friday at the school where their famous forebear developed a lifelong love of literature.

Bigelow was a noted lawyer, author and editor who was also President Abraham Lincoln's minister to France during the Civil War, a founder of the New York Public Library and co-owner of the New York Evening Post. Bigelow also worked behind the scenes in the U.S. acquisition of rights to build a canal through Panama instead of Nicaragua.

Librarians put together a special exhibit at Schaffer Library with samples of Bigelow's correspondence, his typewriter, archival items and other oddities.

"We're pleased to hold our family reunion at Union College this year," said Rod Bigelow, 70, a retired U.S. Customs agent who lives in Chazy Lake in the Adirondacks. He is president of the Bigelow Society, which has about 500 members. It publishes a quarterly newsletter, The Forge, which reports on the genealogy of 12 generations of the family descended from John Bagley Bigelow. The patriarch emigrated from England in 1632 at age 16. He settled in Watertown, Mass., worked as a blacksmith and fathered 13 children.

John Bigelow, the notable Union alumnus, was the seventh generation of the family in America.

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"We're excited to have the Bigelows here," said librarian Annette LeClair, who has been expanding Union's Bigelow online database, which includes digitized copies of many of Bigelow's records and background on his remarkable coterie of associates.

"The digital universe has opened up a new level of interest on Bigelow," LeClair said. There have been recent inquiries from scholars as far away as Mexico.

The effort is aimed at reclaiming Bigelow's place in history. A 1947 biography by Margaret Clapp was titled "Forgotten First Citizen." It won the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1948 for Clapp, who argued that Bigelow deserved greater recognition.

Even descendants had forgotten. Rod Bigelow did not know about him until he visited his son, Jeffrey, a 1995 Union graduate, at the Schenectady campus and found a book about John Bigelow in the library and became fascinated.

"They have an incredible amount of material about him and his life at Union. That's why we're here," said Bigelow, who was joined by his son, the Union alum, who works as a hydrogeologist and lives in Saratoga Springs.

The weekend reunion included a reception and discussion about the library exhibit and the Bigelow papers as well as a Saturday visit to John Bigelow's family homestead at Malden-on-Hudson in Saugerties.

About 15 Bigelows were expected at the reunion.

"My brother drove over from Las Vegas, stopped at my house and we decided we should go to the reunion," said Dale Bigelow, 70, a retired city bus driver from Grand Rapids, Minn.

"I don't know much about John Bigelow, but it's pretty amazing to see this exhibit about all the things he did," said his brother, Alan Bigelow, 79, a retired high school teacher who lives in Las Vegas. "We all share an interest in history."

"John Bigelow is one of my favorite alumni at Union," said Ellen Fladger, college archivist and head of special collections. "He knew everyone who was anyone in his day, and there were so many facets to his life. He was a true power broker."

Matt Connolly, a digital projects specialist, has been digitizing Bigelow's correspondence and is working on a book about Bigelow's deep interest in Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish philosopher, theologian and mystic.

"Bigelow believed in democracy as a spiritual process and that historical events were part of God's plan," Connolly said.

Don Bigelow, 70, a retired optometrist from Bradenton, Fla., who is is editor of the Bigelow Society's journal, expected to gather enough material for an article or two at the reunion.

"I'm looking forward to learning a lot more about John Bigelow this weekend," he said.